The sport of snowboarding has become a very popular winter recreational activity. With mainstream acceptance of the sport, the technological sophistication of snowboards has increased at a rapid rate as has the concomitant cost of snowboards and snowboard accessories.
Although many advances have been made in snowboard technology, snowboard bindings and systems for mounting these bindings on a snowboard have changed little. The two types of bindings typically used today on snowboards are the "base" bindings which have a bottom plate which rests against the upper surface of the snowboard when mounted on the snowboard, and the "baseless" bindings which do not have such a plate, allowing the skier's boot to contact the snowboard directly. Both types of bindings are typically mounted on a snowboard by means of four bolts or screws. These bolts typically engage four "T" nuts embedded partially within the snowboard's core.
Typically, a quality snowboard will have five or six pairs of bolt-engaging "T" nuts, positioned towards each of the front and rear ends of the snowboard, although many snowboards have fewer. Two of these pairs of "T" nuts, four "T" nuts in total, are used to mount one binding. The appropriate set of "T" nuts to be used depends upon the type of binding mounted. A "base" binding utilizes two adjacent pairs of "T" nuts, while a "baseless" binding utilizes two pairs of "T" nuts which are separated from each other by one or more unused pairs of "T" nuts.
The availability of five or six pairs of "T" nuts allows a snowboarder to mount the bindings at a selected location on the snowboard. Both the front and rear bindings may be selectively mounted in this fashion, allowing the snowboarder to adjust the relative distance between the front and rear bindings according to his or her own comfort. For example, a very tall snowboarder, preferring a wide stance, will likely mount bindings using the appropriate set of "T" nuts located farthest from the centre of the snowboard, thus maximising relative distance between the bindings. On the other hand, a shorter snowboarder may prefer a narrower stance.
This method of mounting bindings has a number of major disadvantages. Firstly, because each binding can be mounted only in discrete positions along a portion of the snowboard, there are a limited number of mounting combinations which give the snowboarder only a restricted range of choices for width of snowboarding stance. A snowboarder may find that one combination of mounting positions gives too narrow a stance and that the next-widest stance provided by a different combination of mounting positions is too wide. This problem reduces enjoyment of the sport and can lead to injury of the snowboarder.
Secondly, a limited number of mounting combinations gives the snowboarder a restricted range of choices for relative position of stance along the snowboard. Some snowboarders prefer to stand near the front end of the snowboard, while others prefer to stand near the rear end of the snowboard. One combination of mounting positions may prove to be too near one end of the board, while the nest nearest combination of mounting positions may prove to be too far from that end of the board.
A third problem with the typical mounting system is that the "T" nuts may be "stripped" if an excessive amount of torque is applied in screwing the bindings onto the snowboard or if the bindings are incorrectly screwed onto the snowboard by forcing the mounting screws into the "T" nuts at an angle such that the "T" nuts become cross-threaded. Also, a snowboarder may apply so much torque to the snowboard in use that the bindings may actually be "ripped out" of the snowboard. This unfortunately is a common occurrence which results in the loss of at least one mounting position to the snowboarder and again limits the number of stances available to the snowboarder. If enough "T" nuts are stripped, the snowboard becomes essentially useless unless costly repairs involving replacement of the stripped "T" nuts can be made to the snowboard.
The binding mounting system of the present invention ameliorates these problems.